The Dryad and the City: Fantasy

The sorrow of the trees, that was what she felt when she was just a sapling. Her mother walked away from them, out to find her father who had never returned to them after that one moonlit night when she was conceived, but her mother had lost her heart, as was the way of their people. And when a tree loses its heart, it must regain it again or the tree will fall. She remembered some sunny mornings of being a toddler playing in the sunlight with her mother, before her mother left. But once she was old enough to have her own nutrients and not to need her mother's branches to protect her from the harshest winds and the drought, her mother left to find her heart. The daughter left behind stayed a sapling for a very long time, as if she hoped her mother would come back and awaken her if she only waited long enough. It took a forest fire to rouse her into the form with legs, and she stumbled and staggered alongside the graceful deer and the other animals--


Inspiration: The painting from Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/35475855@N05/6789097553/
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: It is important that this is *not* an ecological fable. Because otherwise? Too trite, too easily done. Instead, dryad goes to the city and finds...a different thing.